Okay, one more thing. We can complain all we want on this forum, but please, also go to one or more of the public Facebook pages for Adobe, such as https://www.facebook.com/Photoshop?fref=ts and post a comment there.

Companies don't like public humiliation and in this era of the Internet and social media, it can be the most effective tool. Please, go post your opinion and urge others to do so as well.

I just wrote, "BOO!" It was the shortest, most simplistic, response I could think of to Adobe's ignorance.

canon rumors FORUM

I'm surprised that this has just hit the headlines. A couple of months ago, Adobe faced an Australian government inquiry into their pricing structure. (CS6 is way overpriced here). The head of Adobe Australia made it clear that the current price of the boxed version of CS6 is irrelvant because they're moving everyone to creative cloud which is meant to have almost standard pricing worldwide. OK - I don't think he actually said that he actually said they were stopping the boxed version, but he made it quite clear that the future of Adobe was with online subscriptions.

I'm still on CS4 and have recently been thinking of upgrading to CS6. Compared with buying, I actually thought that the creative cloud subscription looked like good value (at least here in Australia). While I'd prefer to buy the software, if a subscription works out cheaper, and the software works well this way, why not give it a go. Besides, there are several alternatives, if Adobe drops the ball.

Since Adobe has decided to go with a subscription-only model, it might be helpful to collect the community's knowledge of alternatives in one thread. If you have experience with alternatives to Lightroom, Photoshop, Bridge, Premiere, Acrobat or any of the other photo/video-related "Creative Cloud" applications, please share it here. It would be particularly helpful to mention:

...., the CEO of Adobe Corporation was sitting on the redeye from Boston to NY. He could not shake the uneasiness he felt having left the meeting with the McKensey group. Their assesment of the business and subsequent strategic choices offered to the company, posed great challenges to the way the company and their shareholders thought about the business.....

[2023, HBS, Boston MA, in class]. Professor x "So Mike, give me an assessment of the predicament the Adobe Company was facing" Mike "Adobe who?" Professor x "Okay, just to set things in perspective.. Adobe was a very successful company in the first decade of this millenium, very much like Nokia was in the 1990's, and Apple was until 2010.....

I took advantage of Adobe's offer for a discounted upgrade to CS6 last year. Catch was, it was download only. So, while I have it on my computer, I don't own any disks. My computer crashes, I have to go through Adobe to have it authorized on the new computer.

It's a safe bet that you can borrow someone else's DVD and re-install. Of course, you'll need to use your own license key.

Forgetting the cost for a moment, how would Lightroom service even work? Half the time I use it, I am on my laptop away from the grid. Are we going to have to load our photos upstream to the cloud in order to work on them? That doesn't seem practical to me when you are dealing with a couple hundred images in LR.

I don't believe they're talking about cloud-based apps. I think you download and install normally, but activation and ongoing use requires an active subscription. So if you decide to stop paying, you can no longer open your files in the app. That's my big concern with this model. I also use a lot of site-licensed software at work and it can be a problem running such software when you're away from an Internet connection when the software decides to "phone home", depending on implementation. That could be an issue for people like you taking LR to remote locations on a laptop.

Lots of questions, though, particularly because they're planning to charge $10/mo for a single app and $50/mo for the full boat ($30/mo for the first year for upgraders). That's like buying a new copy of LR every 1-1.5 years, which I don't always do, and $360-600/yr is a LOT more than I pay now for all my Adobe software (PSE, Dreamweaver, etc).

Guess I'll be milking LR 4/PSE 10 for a long while, and hoping they still provide free Adobe Raw and/or DNG converters if I ever need a new camera.

Brave new world.

This is correct, I currently use Adobe Cloud for current release of all Adobe products, you download & install what you need as you need it, the product is then on your Hard Drive just like the DVD you purchased, you again download any updates as part of the subscription model you paid for. Each year you pay the subscription.

It works & works well, I'm completely Happy, but there's a caveat, the current system of Adobe Cloud is designed for Companies that require the use of more than 1 Licensed user, it's not really designed for the individual user, hence the +USD$800 price Tag.

In Asia in particular the most cloned software is Adobe, you can buy a full copy of CS6 Suite of the side of the road in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam etc, for $10 Bucks, so you can see why companies like Adobe are heading towards this Cloud Based Subscription Model, it's inevitable gentlemen, and Ladies.

I dont know for sure, but I would envisage Adobe creating a single user service of the Cloud at some point in the next 12 months, I would think prior to CS7, and I cant se the pricing not being more flexible for the single user, wouldn't make sense to try to charge a single user 800 bucks a year, as has been stated, Adobe will loose a huge amount of Business, and Adobe before all else, are about business & profits while providing a service.

What are you talking about?

The Creative Cloud is currently single user mode as well.

You want to subscribe to the CC, it is $30 / mo first year, and then $50 a mo for the 2nd year. If you want to just do 1 month, it is $75. you also can do PS alone, which I think is like $15 a mo.

Couple of things. $30/mo is for 1st year only. Months 13+ is AT LEAST $49... and nothing to say year 3 or 4 they do not raise the price.

I GUARANTEE you, that as they add features or "upgrades" you can expect $75 - $100/ month for Creative Cloud.

Not sure on LightRoom. From the release I saw from Adobe, it looked like EVERY UPGRADE was going to Cloud only as of June 17. So maybe LR5 comes out before then. Now LR is currently an "Also Included" in the Creative Cloud, and looks like main software is Photoshop, In Design, Illustrator, Premiere, DreamWeaver, AfterEffects and Muse, so LR might still be stand alone, but still not good.

Long and short, for Creative Cloud, at minimum 2 year cost is $960. I expect year 3 to go up as well... whether $59 or expecting $69, you can expect the 5 year cost of the cloud to be around $3000 - $3500

What I'm talking about is the option that may well be available to you, in Europe or the US, wasn't available to anyone in Asia until today, and in fact even today it's not available as Adobe's servers for Asia area are down today, so back off Meh and dish your agro to someone else.

Logged

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Can't wait to see the stock prices plummet in the morning. Any profit gains in utilizing a cloud based program will be lost due to the loss in share price of the stock.

Also if it can be used on a computer offline for 99 days, I assure you that this will be hacked and a bypass to the licensing server will be out within a couple days of the initial release. Don't underestimate the individuals out there who crack software. The top few hackers that develop these workarounds are light years smarter than anyone working at adobe.

As an individual who purchased cs4 and cs5e, I will too not be a part of cloud based software marketing. I will be awaiting the pirated version, for all loyalty to such a company who shows such disregard to the interest of their customers has been lost.

They both tried to change the business model, cost their companies billions, and lost their jobs.

This has been repeated a couple of times in this thread, and it bears correction. The CEO of Netflix...is *still* the CEO of Netflix. Reed Hastings, despite multiple PR blunders, retained his position and Netflix is currently doing pretty darn well. Whether that is because of Hastings or in spite of him is of course open for debate.

Subscription scheme is only for big professional products. I really don't believe it will target end user products (Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements) and Lightroom because they have completely different pricing strategy.

I've looked at their subscription stuff and it simply doesn't make sense for me.

They are trying to smooth revenues through constant revenue flow rather than having big revenue increases during releases. I have no interest in renting software.

+1 on "no interest in renting software". As a former programmer, I like the reasonable price on Photoshop upgrades for current Photoshop users. I have always tried to keep up to date because I've kept up to date on new cameras and I needed the new releases. I'd be ok with a new camera raw price on a per camera basis to pay for their support needs. Even a modest yearly charge for support makes sense ($50-100). But ANYTHING that says I have to run my system from the Internet is a NONE starter. I can't afford that degree of unreliability. As someone else has said, they will probably have you still download your copy of the program to your hard drive as usual. It is the constant connection to the internet that I don't want to be forced to have.

I've never had any illusions that Adobe had any great interest in me as a customer. I get it. I simply have never given them enough money to earn that.

I bought my first copy of Photoshop, a shrinkwrapped box of version 3.0, at substantial discount as a surplus item from a book publisher that had purchased more copies than it needed. I've since upgraded to every second or third version, and am currently using version CS4. My last version upgrade was four or five years ago, and cost approximately $150. That means my monthly costs for the current version have been approximately $30 per year, a far cry from the $50 per month it seems they will be be asking in the future.

To add some further insult to this injury, the only other Adobe product I use with any frequency is Illustrator, and for that I'm currently running version 8.0 (vintage 1999) on old Mac G4 running OS 9 classic. While I do some illustration for my work, the majority that I do is as a hobby. Therefore I cannot really justify even the cost of an upgrade version, and I'm simply comfortable with the Illustrator 8.0 interface.

With the subscription model, it seems Adobe's disinterest in me as a customer has escalated to outright contempt. I've used Adobe Camera Raw within Photoshop for several years. I'm sure Lightroom is a great product, but just haven't given it a long-term test drive. I've been working with Apple's Aperture for several months now as an extended trial, and I'm still somewhat on the fence as to whether I will stay with it long-term. However, the subscription model from Adobe makes it much less likely that Photoshop will be in my toolbox in the future. (If Lightroom remains available as a standalone app, I will certainly give it due consideration in the future.)

It has long been rumored that Apple has its own version of Photoshop waiting in the wings, just waiting for Adobe to tick it off enough to actually pull the trigger on it. While Adobe's subscription model does not seem to be an affront to Apple directly, it does seem to leave an open market opportunity for a Mac App Store product. What is certain is that I will be taking a very close look at applications such as Acorn, Pixelmator, and GraphicConverter to see how well these apps can replace the functionality of Photoshop that I commonly use. None of these are likely to replace Photoshop one-for-one as the graphics Swiss Army Knife, but I would rather jump back and forth between two or three narrower-focused apps that I actually *own* for the functionality I need than get roped into a monthly subscription for what is, to be honest, a rather bloated app at this point. (Admit it. The majority of us only use a fraction of Photoshop's full capability.)

Anger at Adobe is justified, I think. But once you cool down it might be a good opportunity to take a look around and see what other choices are out there for the particular type of work you do.

For business this is an attractive package. I work for a small newspaper and we run 20 or so machines with CS5.5, its nice you can get the whole suite and seen as tho every machine is used 5 days a week for 8 hours with these aps in constant use it is worth it.

Also for those thinking adobe will produce poor upgrades check out their youtube channel there are some awesome additions to CC only already like Camera Raw being a photoshop filter!

If anything the photoshop CC seems to be willing customers with the new features as they aren't available anywhere else. Here in the UK it is £48 a month for the whole suite. Seems pretty reasonable, I am a graphic designer/photographer and I use 80% of the applications in the suite daily. At home I use PS ID IL LR and Muse. But I dont see the updates being slow or non existent I think it will speed it up to get more people on board. Once you buy the software they have you where they want you and the need for upgrades is less. Whereas with the CC they are reaching a broader audience.

Also it depends what version you are looking at. The Full CS6 suite in the UK is £2550. Now if you sign up to the CC it will cost £600 a year, each version of CS has had a shelf life of 18-24 months. For that time scale it will be £900 or £1200 thats half the price. Although the problem is that if you decide to quit then you have nothing for your money.

But at the same time I haven't been one to stay on older software, CS4 was slow CS5 was slow (on the mac side) CS5.5 64bit faster. CS4 wont work on Lion either so... IMO having the latest software to keep up with my kit is essential. Camera raw has moved on so far you are loosing out by not having the newest software especially in a competitive market such as print production.

So imo is depends on your situation. Really if you are an amateur a version of PS CS6 and lightroom 4 is a good combo but it will cost you more. But again it will be out of date in no time what so ever as CC takes hold.

But for amateurs I see this sucking pretty bad, there will be another option on its way. Early days yet.

The mandatory move to CC subscription licensing only affects products in the current "CS6" range. Bundled products without a CS6 badge (including Lightroom and Acrobat, plus all the "Elements" versions) will continue to be available under perpetual licenses as they are now.

All paid CC members will have access to a select set of archived versions of the desktop apps. Starting with CS6, select older versions of the desktop creative apps will be archived and available for download. Archived versions are provided “as is” and are not updated to work with the latest hardware and software platforms.